


So Many Things You Were Not

by iwtv



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Forgiveness, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, past unknown relationships, peach verse, peach verse angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 16:42:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11832798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwtv/pseuds/iwtv
Summary: This is dedicated to the wonderful @char7 and a fulfillment of one of her many awesome Flinthamilton prompts on tumblr. <3 I don't know exactly what you wanted for this but I hope I did it some justice.Prompt:  Thomas wrote letters to Flint while on the plantation all those years. Flint finds them and reads them. (I decided to do a journal format instead of letters)





	So Many Things You Were Not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Char7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Char7/gifts).



He’d been looking for the culinary book they’d bought a few weeks ago when he stumbled across it. With no luck finding the book in their small but ever-growing bookcase James had looked through the drawers of Thomas’s writing desk. He found extra paper, the inkpot, some quills, and Thomas’s journal he had brought with him from Oglethorpe’s plantation. The soft leather book gave him pause. He had seen it among Thomas’s small bag of belongings when they had left the plantation but had not given it much thought. Thomas was always writing in London, either new ideas for his next salon or a moral treatise or more precise plans for Nassau.

James rubbed a thumb over the soft leather cover. He discovered upon opening it that it was less a true book and more of a flap of leather with pages bound together with hemp stitching. Crude but rather pretty. He wanted to look at Thomas’s handwriting. Now that he was thinking about it James realized Thomas had not written—at least not to his knowledge—since they’d moved into the cabin.

He opened it randomly towards the center. Thomas’s script was still elegant, at first. James ran his fingers over the pages, the smell of old ink making him nostalgic. He flipped through the pages just because, noting that much of the handwriting was less elegant and noticeably more like quick scrawls:

_I decided to end our dalliance today. My own plan has turned on me, it seems. I wanted Henry because of how little he reminded me of you, of how he could help me forget. But it seems the more I forget the more I fearful I grow of forgetting too much and oh, I don’t think I can bear it. I know I cannot bear it._

James blinked, his heart seeming to freeze in his chest. There was no more on the page. James re-read it again and again. His mind grew more dazed each time. He felt his mouth go dry. He looked and out the window and the bright sunlight streaming in and blinked again.

“What?” he said out loud.

He looked back down at the page, hoping the words might have somehow changed. They had not. _how little he reminded me of you_. He beat the phrase around his head. Was Thomas addressing him? There seemed no other option to consider. And yet Thomas had never shown him this journal and James had never even seen him pull it out of his desk since placing it there.

He hastily turned the page and skimmed the words, but this time there was only talk of learning the proper way to kill a chicken, apparently something Thomas had done himself. One the next page he wrote of a conversation with Oglethorpe and something about the nature of man. James skimmed over it, flipping through page after page. He flipped all the way through and started from the beginning, skimming over Thomas’s thoughts and feelings and stopping again at angry scrawling:

_Yesterday evening one of the guards forced me to spend the night in the field, alongside four other men. They had been caught in the middle of a jest and were laughing instead of working. The guard whipped them like they were animals. When I attempted to defend them and to explain that they had all been working hard up until that moment, I was also whipped and told to join them in a night outside. We were given nothing and slept on the bare ground. I let my rage consume me and slept not at all._

_I imagined how pleasing it would be for me to whip him instead, to jerk it from his grasp before he knew what had happened, whipping him within inches of his worthless life. All of them, these guards in this place. How is it that men can choose such abominable professions? They talk themselves into it, I suppose, tell themselves that they are doing right. At some point, my dear, I think you might have agreed with their perspective._

_And now I’m going to tell you that I also imagined what you might do if you saw him whip me. I imagined you using your brilliant military training to do things to him I’ve only ever wondered at. And then I tortured myself with empty thoughts of you coming to rescue me. Oh James, I’m so sorry. Damn me and my thoughts. I am allowed to read and write here but I have little in the way of men to share my thoughts with. Most of the other prisoners here are not educated and my thoughts run so wild at times because I can no longer reign them in._

That was the end of the entry. It was dated simply 4/10, with no year. His hands were shaking as he turned the page, very slowly this time. But then he flipped it back and re-read the entry. His mind took him to that evening, conjuring up the guard and his whip. It felt like someone had punched him in the gut. But what was worse was Thomas’s imaginary rescue. James closed his eyes. He had not cried since their actual reunion, the one where he came as a pirate pauper in chains, not as Thomas’s navy man in shining armor.

The guilt over not acting earlier to save Thomas from Bethlem was suddenly in his throat, choking him. And hot on its heels was the despair it created in its black wake, so great that he had wanted to drown in it every time he felt it. And he’d tried, literally. But there was no sea here, no way for him to simply sink beneath its surface and let the current do its work as he’d once tried to do.

He let out a shaky breath and pinched his eyes shut until he saw stars. When he opened them he had to get his bearings on the world around him again. It was not quite mid afternoon, judging by the angle of the sun through the widow. Thomas had been gone since this morning into town. He had some furs to deliver for money and in turn some supplies to purchase, mostly garden tools and a basket for peaches to replace the one that had broken. James had decided to stay home and try to fix the leak in the northwest corner of their roof. Thomas would not be back until later this evening.

He should have closed the damn thing and put it back in its drawer. Even if it was addressed to him James knew he had no right to read it without Thomas’s permission.

Permission, he knew now as he considered the journal’s content, that Thomas was not going to give freely or out of the blue.

He wavered, shutting the journal but leaving his thumb holding the pages apart. It was clearly filled with Thomas’s true thoughts and feelings. The change in script was like a physical manifestation to James of sharper and rougher things, of pain. Pain that was and always would be a blurry shape to him, known only from what Thomas chose to tell him. There had been as many times that he’d wanted desperately for Thomas to tell him more about his last ten years as there had been times he feared it, feared his reaction and how angry certain things would make him. And Thomas had told him of the cruelty of the guards, but not that he’d been whipped. He’d told him of being overworked for days on end, of weeks of bad or meager meals, of feet aching from blisters and a sun-scorched face, but not that he’d been left to sleep in the fields like fucking cattle.

He’d spoken even less of Bethlem.

Here, in his hands, was a chance to know all of it. Not because he wanted to get angry, but because he desperately _needed_ to know what Thomas had thought during that time. What Thomas had thought of _him_. The need only grew stronger the longer he deliberated with the journal in his hands.

James turned the page again and walked over to the wall beside the bookcase. He slid down it until he sat on the floor.

*

 

_4/15_

_Saw a welcome sight today. I discovered a clump of bushes by the south wall that carry on them small, bright red flowers. They are curiously tube-shaped in nature. As I was admiring their beauty the tiniest, oddest creature darted down to one of the flowers. I recalled it only from the pages of a book. It was a humming-bird. It traveled from bloom to bloom, drinking its fill from deep within the flowers as nature had allowed it to with its long, needle-like beak._

_A strange delight overcame me as I watched it. Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone._

_I dared to stand there another moment despite the guards, hoping it would return. I don’t know why this struck me, James. Perhaps it was the old analogy of birds and freedom; perhaps just flights of fancy on my part. Or perhaps I was in awe of its design; how Nature could make such a small, delicate thing so adept at survival, with its speed and alertness. If only Man could be so adept at survival and not also destruction._

The entry ended. James read the next few entries, holding his breath in case his own name should stand out to him.

Entries about conversations with other prisoners (mostly mundane), entries that described the plantation and Mr. Oglethorpe’s house in detail, entries about Henry.

His eyes locked onto the name. With a sense of dread he began the entry, dated 7/20.

_Henry is a shy fellow. He seems more comfortable speaking only to one person than a crowd. He tells me he is half Spanish on his father’s side. He has their dark skin and hair, with a most striking black beard. I’ve heard the others jesting to him about staying out in the sun too long. He refuses to shave his beard, saying that he has not done so in ten years. That got me started about my own developing facial hair (not as full as yours, my dear, when last I saw you, but very un-lord like) and wouldn’t you know, it seems I’ve made a friend._

_Oh James. I hope you’ve done the same, that you and Miranda are not living in isolation somewhere; I know your tendency towards solitude. ~~I hope~~_

The entry stopped, scratched out. James closed his eyes for a long moment. He felt as if the world were once again shifting beneath his feet, though he was not on a ship.

He rose and poured a generous amount of rum into a glass and sat down at the table. He took a long swallow from the glass, staring at the journal before him. Then he resumed. The next entry also contained the word Henry.

_8/04_

_On lunch break yesterday Henry took me behind the chicken coop away from the fields. He had a pipe on his person, much like the one my father used to have when I was still a boy. Henry had no tobacco, however. He told me had had traded his old shoes for some opium. Such trades are commonplace here, much like a regular prison I suppose. I’d only ever smelled opium from afar and told him so. Henry’s a very polite fellow, James. He had not a single problem if I didn’t wish to partake._

_‘Some days you look as if you need some relief,’ he said to me in his broken but clear English. I was perplexed. When I asked him what he meant he looked at me steady and said, ‘Relief from your pain, whatever it may be.’_

_I think we both knew in that moment he was not referring to my aching knees or back pain._

_You told me once you took laudanum with your navy mates upon becoming a lieutenant. You described feeling as though you were sleeping wide awake. That is what this was like. I remember laughing for the first time in years. I sounded strange to myself, yet with Henry I felt wonderful. Ah, that was the opium talking._

James took another drink, feeling the burn down the back of his throat and settling in his stomach. He needed to stop this. He strangled the voice of reason telling him to do so. _…yet with Henry I felt wonderful._

Thomas had managed to feel wonderful during their separation. That made him feel…relieved. Glad? Bitter.

The final thought stuck in him like a thorn. What the fuck was wrong with Thomas finding relief—as Henry had put it—with someone?

He skimmed again, knowing exactly what he was looking for and afraid to find it. He froze again over the entry without a date: _I decided to end our dalliance today._ He flipped the pages backwards.

_November_

_I don’t know the bloody date. Fuck, James. I don’t know how to feel. Something happened four days ago. ~~Henry and I~~ ~~I fucked~~ James, I was with Henry. I fucked him. I could say I fucked him because I knew he was like me, because he was kind and understanding, but really I fucked him because he was dark-skinned and you were light; he was the son of a farmer and not a carpenter, he was too polite and never blunt. So many things you were not. He reminded me of you not at all._

_12/12_

_I fuck him but all I can think about is you. Deus me ex inferis!*_

[*God save me from this hell]

James sat back in the chair hard enough for it to skitter across the floor. He stared straight ahead, defying the tears in his eyes.

He poured more rum into his glass. His hand only shook a little.

The liquor still burned inside him when the front door flew open and Thomas stepped inside the cabin. Drizzling rain came in with him. He shut the door and took off his cloak, glancing at James.

“It was just starting when I was coming around the bend. A good thing I thought to bring my cloak.”

He wiped his boots down and looked up at James again.

“Darling? What are you doing?”

James’s hand clenched the glass so tight he thought it might shatter. Thomas’s eyes fell to the journal but didn’t recognize it. James had not lit any candles, had not even realized it had grown dark outside. He reached up and very carefully shut the journal, revealing its soft leather cover. Thomas took a few steps towards the table and froze.

“I was looking for the cook book,” James said, so quietly he barely heard himself. “I’m sorry. I found it…” He swallowed hard. “…by mistake.”

“You’ve been reading this?” Thomas asked. He reached out as though he were putting his hand in fire and pulled the journal towards him. His jaw clenched, lips tight. James looked down. The moisture collected in his eyes, hot with guilt and sorrow.

“Yes.”

“How much…did you read?”

James swallowed again. When he spoke it sounded like shattered teacups.

“Deus me ex inferis,” he choked out. “Why? Why did you not tell me?”

Thomas sucked in a breath and looked down at the journal, across the room, anywhere but at James. His expression was unreadable to James and it scared him.

“You were not meant to read any of this,” he said, but it was not the raging inferno James had been anticipating.

“You were not meant to see it,” Thomas repeated firmly but James could see his eyes glimmering wetly.

James rose. “I’m sorry. I know. I should not have. But once I realized what it was, I wanted to know… _needed_ to know what you thought about me, about what happened, about…I don’t know what. I…”

“Goddamnit!” Thomas bit out through clenched teeth and there was the inferno. He sent the journal hurtling across the room. It crashed against the wall above the mantle and fell to the ground. James dared to walk around the table towards him.

“Thomas, please, I— ”

Thomas held up a hand at him and James halted. Thomas shook his head. He met James’s gaze with an agony that was as unexpected as his outburst but far more painful to see.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The unbearable tone of it reminded James of his own litany of apologies for a decade’s worth of good things gone wrong.

“I need…some time.”

Thomas’s chest was heaving. He turned around and stormed off into the bedroom, slamming the door shut. James stood dumbly after him. He turned and stared down at the fallen, maimed journal by the fireplace for a long time. Then he put on his boots and stepped out onto the porch and into the rain. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. The tears that had been hovering there fell down his cheeks, mixing with the rain so that he could not feel them.

*

By the time he returned inside he was soaked. He peeled off everything slowly and laid it all in front of the fireplace. He wrapped himself in the deerskin rug on the floor and started a fire. He did not touch the journal on the floor. He fell asleep staring into the dying fire, taking little comfort from its warmth. He felt like shit, certainly. But what was worse was that he could not tell if Thomas’s anger had been directed at him…or himself.

*

He woke up still in the rocking chair. Morning light streamed in through the window. The fire crackled. Blinking, James sat up, pulling the deerskin around him. Thomas was bent in front of the fire and had it roaring. He was very still. He scarcely glanced at James when he stirred. James saw the journal in his hands. He was ripping out pages from it, one by one, and feeding them to the flames.

*

That day and the following days fell into a kind of strange normalcy, where everything was normal except that it was not. They prepared and ate their meals. James skinned wild game. Thomas tended his garden. They inspected the peach trees and chased away the deer. They read the paper delivered to them by their far-reaching neighbors and made random comments here and there.

Oddly, Thomas had bade him come into the bedroom the night immediately after their fight. When James could somehow will Thomas’s eyes to meet his own he saw only sorrow there and perhaps a streak of residual anger. He would ask but Thomas would always say he was not ready to talk.

At last, on the sixth day, when James was doing nothing but sitting against the trunk of the willow tree by the river and wondering how much longer either of them could bear it, Thomas came to him.

They sat side by side in silence for a long moment, but silently James was grateful just to have Thomas by his side in any capacity again. Then Thomas spoke.

“Henry was the only one. You should know that.”

James nodded. He dared to glance over at his partner. Thomas looked straight ahead at the river, absently twirling a bit of lavender around his fingers.

“It was a few years ago. Four. I think. Jesus, I can’t even remember. It’s odd how time worked after London. I can vividly recall the black chiseled sign of Bethlem when they dragged me there, but I can’t for the life of me remember when my original clothes turned too ragged and they changed them, or when I last heard from Peter. I don’t even remember what time of the year it was I was sent to the New World.”

Thomas looked down at his hands, brows creased hard. James swallowed.

“I…know the feeling,” he said softly.

He could not remember when Miranda had cut his hair so drastically the first time, or his first successful pirate raid aside from the fact that it was somewhere near Jamacia, or what time of the year it had been when they’d received the letter from Peter politely informing him that his entire world had killed himself in a London hospital.

But he could remember the smell and taste of blood the night he’d murdered Alfred Hamilton (God, there had been so much of it). He could remember the taste of Miranda’s tears as he’d embraced her afterward.

He blinked as Thomas spoke again after a sigh fell from his lips.

“You know I thought you were dead by then. I’d held on for so long, despite Peter and the people he used to send later on to try and convince me of your death. I refused on some…gut level—no, on some _soulful_ level, to believe it. But when I arrived at Oglethorpe’s, free in so many respects as I had not known in so many years, I found myself free to start daydreaming again. My mind was worse off, I’m afraid. You probably read some of that in the journal.”

Thomas paused and looked up again. James had scooted closer to him, his palm flat on the ground beside him. How desperately he was resisting the need to reach up and touch Thomas, to get the other man to simply _look_ at him.

“Henry was…convenient, in the end,” said Thomas. “I used him. I had grown fond of him, but essentially I used him to…”

His mouth clamped shut. James looked at him, his fingers dug into the ground. Thomas went very still, arms across his raised knees.

“I used him to forget about you, but it didn’t work, thank God. It didn’t—”

His voice choked on the last few words.

“Oh James, I’m so sorry…”

And James was pulling Thomas to him bodily and Thomas turned into his embrace, sobs racking his body as he buried his face into James’s shoulder and clung to him.

“No,” said James, somehow finding the words. “Oh god no Thomas. You did nothing wrong.”

Thomas sobbed harder against him and James forced space between them, forcefully cupping Thomas’s cheek and making their eyes meet.

“ _You. Did. Nothing. Wrong._ Do you hear me?”

Thomas wiped swiftly at his tears, eyes searching James’s.

“How can you not be angry?” he asked.

James swallowed the lump in his throat.

“I was upset because you didn’t tell me. I was also relived at first, until I read that Latin phrase and I realized you suffered the same as I did, regardless of finding comfort with someone else.”

James wiped away a tear on Thomas’s cheek with his thumb. Thomas clamped his hand over James’s wrist as if clinging to a lifeboat.

“I had planned to. I just didn’t know how or when,” he admitted. “But I should have done so far earlier. I am sorry.”

James pressed his lips to Thomas’s, tears burning his own eyes now.

“Apology accepted,” he said softly.

Thomas let out a shaking breath, visibly calming.

“I don’t care what you may think of yourself, you are a good man,” he said. He looked at James with eyes that were their usual brightness, albeit a bit sad and red around the edges.

James would never believe it, but he sighed and kissed Thomas again anyway.


End file.
